Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

After a bit we passed Giles Heron, and I had another look at him. He was standing by himself, looking on. I thought again that he looked a first-class sort of chap. I said so to Isobel, and she said,

“Yes-he is.”

All at once it was quite easy to ask her what I wanted to know, and I said,

“Are you going to marry him, Isobel?”

She said, “Who told you that, Car?”

I thought I’d braced myself, but when she said that, it caught me like a knife jabbing into an old wound.

I said, “Is it true?” and for an empty, endless minute she didn’t say anything at all. We were dancing all the time.

Then she looked up at me right into my eyes, and she said,

“Would you mind if it were true?”

I hadn’t had any hope for years, but somehow that hurt unbelievably. But I managed not to look away, and I managed to say,

“I want you to be happy.”

There was a sort of shining look in her eyes and a bright rosy color in her cheeks. She looked like she used to look before everything went wrong. I thought it was for Heron, and I didn’t know how to bear it. Then she said,

“I couldn’t be happy if you were sad. Don’t you know that yet, Car?”

I don’t think I said anything. I tried to say her name, but I don’t think I got it out.

She said, “When you’re happy, I’m happy, and when you’re sad, I’m sad.”

And there, just there, the music stopped, and the dream broke.

I danced with Corinna next. Fay seemed to be off my hands all right. She had clicked with the Irish cousin.

Corinna was most awfully pleased with England, and her English relations, and Linwood, and Uncle John. She said he was a perfect lamb; and I thought he must have changed an awful lot, or else Corinna had really made a complete conquest. She raved about every one and everything except Anna. I noticed she didn’t say much about Anna; she just slid away from her. I brought her back firmly.

“What about Anna?” I said. “Is she a perfect lamb too?”

Corinna gazed at me earnestly.

“I don’t think you’ve got at all the right idea about your Uncle John.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I do not.”

“But we weren’t talking about my Uncle John-we were talking about his wife’s niece, Anna Lang, and I was asking you whether she was a perfect lamb.”

She made a wicked face.

“She’s very handsome.”

“Handsome is as handsome does.”

All at once she looked very serious.

“What does she do, Cousin Car?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She looked across at Isobel, who was dancing with Heron.

“I love Isobel. Don’t you?”

I believe I blushed.

Corinna laughed.

“I think your Isobel’s perfectly sweet.” She cocked her chin at me impudently, waited a minute, and said, “Why don’t you say, ‘She’s not my Isobel’? You don’t know your part a bit. That was your cue, and you didn’t take it.”

I laughed a little too.

“I’m not on in this play, really.”

“Isobel thinks you are,” she said.

I changed the subject.

“We’re not going to talk about Isobel-we’re going to talk about Bobby Markham.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to. Where did you meet him?”

“Cousin John had the Tarrants to lunch, and they brought him with them, so I said would they all come to my party to-night, and they said they would-only Anna wouldn’t let Cousin John come after all. Don’t you think it was real mean of her? But if she’s a great friend of yours, perhaps I oughtn’t to say that. Is she a great friend of yours?”

“No, she isn’t.”

“She said you were a great friend of hers.”

“I’m not.”

“I thought a gentleman never contradicted what a lady said.”

“Then I’m not a gentleman. I don’t like lies and I always contradict them?”

“Aren’t you fierce!” said Corinna. “What shall I say to Peter when I write to him?”

“Are you writing to him?”

“Of course I am. I write to him by every mail. Wouldn’t you like to know what I’m going to say about you?”

“Not if it’s very bad. I’m a sensitive plant, and if you wrote harshly about me-I should just fade out.”

“ ’M-” said Corinna. She looks awfully pretty when she says ‘ ’M-’ I expect she knows it too.

Our dance was just coming to an end, when she exclaimed and pulled me out of the stream.

“I’ve got a note for you, and I’m forgetting all about it!”

I felt very much surprised, because I couldn’t think who could have given her a note. She took it out of a little silver bag and gave it to me. I felt more puzzled than ever. There was a small square envelope with a typed address, “Carthew Fairfax, Esq.,” and that was all.

“Who is it from?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“But who gave it you?”

“A waiter put it down on the table in front of me.”

“A waiter?”

She nodded.

“Open it-that’s the way to know who it’s from.”

The music had stopped, and there were a lot of people passing us. I stood back to get out of their way and tore open the envelope.

There was a plain sheet of paper inside, or rather, part of a sheet of paper, for the top of it had been torn off, leaving the docked sheet almost square. Across this square was typed:

Accept any invitation extended to you. You are to go about and make friends. Look up old acquaintances and make new ones. Funds by first post to-morrow.

Z.10

I stared at the paper. It was thick and expensive. The bit that had been torn away would have had an embossed address on it and a telephone number-I’d have given something to see them. I put the note away in my pocket, and found Corinna looking at me with eyes like saucers.

“Well?” she said.

“I’m not any the wiser.”

“Really?”

“Really. Would you know the waiter who gave you the note?”

“No, I shouldn’t-I never saw him.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s perfectly intriguing,” said Corinna. “I had just finished my soup, when a hand came over my shoulder- and of course I thought it was going to take my plate, but it didn’t-it just put down that note and went away. And I was too perfectly surprised to do anything but stare at the envelope-because I didn’t even know you were in the room. And when I turned round, you couldn’t say there was any particular waiter near our table at all.”

Of course it’s the easiest thing in the world to tip a waiter and tell him to let a girl have a note without seeing who gives it to her. I just wondered who had tipped the waiter. And as I was wondering, Corinna said “Oh!” and I looked down the room, and at the far end, coming through the open folding doors, I saw Anna Lang.

“Well, I’ll tell any one she’s handsome,” said Corinna, in the tone of one who concedes a single virtue.

Anna came in alone. The dancing floor was empty for the moment, and she crossed it slowly and with the most complete self-possession.

Corinna was quite right-she’s handsome, and I’d never seen her look handsomer. She was dressed in some sort of rose-colored stuff which sparkled all over as if it were powdered with diamonds. She holds herself magnificently, and she walks like a Spanish woman or an Indian. Every one in the room was looking at her.

She came up to Corinna and shook hands. I didn’t know whether she’d seen me or not.

“I’ve come after all,” she said. “Uncle John was so distressed at my missing your party. He begged me to take the car and run up-and as he really was going straight to bed after his dinner, I came.”

When Corinna had been nice and polite, Anna looked at me, and was surprised. I don’t know how she thought I was going to believe she’d only just seen me, because I am six foot one to Corinna’s five foot two, so it stands to reason she couldn’t very well have seen her and missed me.